Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ANTARCTICA: The Cinema at the Bottom of the World

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 18 2004 (IPS) - Some will hike or ride in on snowmobiles, others will come by boat, navigating around the icebergs, and some will even hop a small plane.

But no one on the frozen King George Island (known in Argentina as 25 de Mayo) will want to miss the opening of the first movie theatre in Antarctica, on Argentina’s Jubany base, in February.

“It was a surprise, and everyone is excited,” said architect Fernando Kroupa, who is overseeing construction of the cinema at the base, on a spot where a warehouse used to stand.

“Recreation here basically consists of videos or card games in the mess hall,” Kroupa told IPS in a conversation by radio from Jubany.

The “Latitude 90” movie theatre will seat 58 and will show different Argentine or foreign films on DVD, with subtitles in English, each week.

In addition, actors, movie directors, artists and writers will periodically visit the base to give workshops for the people at Jubany, which has a year-round staff of 14 that rotates every two years.

The theatre was an initiative of the Argentine Antarctic Institute, whose director, medical Dr. Mariano Memori, spent two years at the Jubany base as the head of the mission in the 1990s. Although he has positive memories of that experience, he admitted to IPS that there were few recreational activities, and filling up free time often became a challenge.

“Videos, books, music and chess” were some of the ways to relax, said Memori. “Back then there was no Internet,” and there were waiting lists for the most popular books. Visiting other bases was another past-time, he recalled.

“On the Chinese base called the Great Wall, they had a lot of videos, but all in their own language,” he added.

The agreement signed this month with the Argentine film institute (INCAA) also states that efforts will be made to bring artists and directors to Antarctica to film documentaries and fiction films in that world of ice and snow, where during the winter it is sometimes impossible to step outside of the base for more than a few minutes.

“We cannot bring all Argentines to Antarctica, but we hope to bring this continent of peace and science, which has been preserved in its pristine state, closer to the people by means of art,” said Memori.

The initiative was immediately welcomed by INCAA. “It seemed a wonderful idea to us and that’s why we’re supporting it,” Jorge Alvarez, deputy director of the institute, which will be in charge of supplying the films for the movie theatre, told IPS.

Many of the films shown in “Latitude 90” will be from Argentina. But there will also be movies from Argentina’s partners in the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc – Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay; from the rest of Latin America, along with Spain and Portugal; and from countries that have signed cultural film exchange agreements with Argentina, like Italy and Germany.

Speaking with enthusiasm about the new venture, Alvarez commented that Deputy Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, who participated in the signing of the agreement, was in Antarctica this year when people from the Jubany base set out on a five-hour hike across the ice to the Polish base “to share a special ham” that had just been brought in.

These acts of companionship are part of the Antarctic culture that INCAA and the Argentine Antarctic Institute want to show the world through art.

In Antarctica, Argentina has seven seasonal bases and six year-round ones like Jubany, which opened in the mid-20th century. An Argentine-German lab and a seismologic station also operate there.

Seven other scientific bases, from Brazil, Chile, China, Poland, Russia, South Korea and Uruguay, also operate on King George Island, which is located about 4,000 kilometres south of Buenos Aires. The Jubany residents plan to invite their colleagues from other bases to the new cinema, at least during summer-time.

Kroupa said the distance between the bases ranges from eight to 20 kilometres, which can be travelled by snowmobile, boat, or in the case of the most remote, the Chilean base, by air. Only the people of two stations are close enough to reach Jubany on foot, but they have to be very careful of the cracks in the glaciers.

The architect, who travels to Antarctica nearly every year to work on different projects in the bases, said the visits between bases form part of the entertainment for the Jubany staff. Even at the distant Chilean base, named Frei, a sports event was recently held that called together the personnel from all of the stations on the island.

Alvarez explained that INCAA will use the services of the Argentine Air Force to fly in enough films so that different ones can be shown every week.

And every 45 days, directors, actors, painters and writers will also be flown in, to meet with the people assigned to the bases.

He said they already have up their sleeves projects to film a documentary on Antarctica, as well as two full-length fiction films set on the continent.

The air and water transport that connects Antarctica with South America always has free space to carry visitors, said Memori. The problem is that they need to be able to spare a lot of time, because it is necessary to travel first to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost province of Argentina, and wait there for the right weather to cross over to Jubany.

At the base, temperatures can reach 20 degrees Celsius below zero in winter, with a windchill factor of 30 to 40 degrees below zero. In the summer, temperatures only go as high as ten degrees.